South Berwick budget level

Thursday

Mar 29, 2012 at 2:00 AMApr 11, 2012 at 9:17 AM

SOUTH BERWICK, Maine — Town Manager Perry Ellsworth announced at Tuesday evening's Town Council meeting that the proposed South Berwick municipal budget of just under $3 million is $21,643 under the tax levy limit spending cap for Fiscal Year 2013.

Ruth Baker

SOUTH BERWICK, Maine — Town Manager Perry Ellsworth announced at Tuesday evening's Town Council meeting that the proposed South Berwick municipal budget of just under $3 million is $21,643 under the tax levy limit spending cap for Fiscal Year 2013.

Last year, voters twice declined to exceed the tax limit imposed by state law, known as LD 1, causing the council to make more than $253,000 in budget cuts.

At Ellsworth's announcement, an audience member exclaimed, "That's amazing!"

Council Chairman Gerald MacPherson added, "Revenues are up, due to the economy picking up a little."

According to the proposed budget, revenues are projected to increase 15 percent this coming year, largely from inspection fees pertaining to new subdivisions, and also in part from recycling sales and transfer station services.

This year, the municipal budget was essentially flatlined, Ellsworth said, with the exception of the Capital Improvements Program budget, which plans for large-ticket items such as equipment and vehicle replacement, road repair and other public works projects. That line item burgeoned from $373,000 to $967,700 — an increase of 159 percent.

Repair and maintenance of the 64 miles of town-maintained roads was the subject of a presentation by Patrick Santos, of the University of New Hampshire's Technology Transfer Center.

The goal of the research project, according to Santos, was to show how the town could maximize its return on investment, maintain an increased quality of road surfaces, and create a transparent, systematic, non-biased methodology for road repairs over time.

Santos depicted how road maintenance — and the costs thereof — progress from "deferred" (new road) to "routine," "preventative," and "rehabilitative," through to "rebuild," over a road life cycle of about 16 years.

By implementing planned maintenance at critical junctures, Santos showed how costly repairs or rebuilds could be fiscally managed and how the most severely compromised stages could be postponed as long as possible.

"We want to avoid the worst-case methodology," he said. Not that poor roads would be ignored, but that planned maintenance would be a mix: decent roads receive planned maintenance to keep them fit longer, and repairs are made to the worst roads.

Santos pointed out that the surveys done on South Berwick's roads were largely "windshield surveys," and not detailed engineering surveys or subsurface investigations. Nonetheless, he said, "Road-surface management survey analysis is a cost-effective, network-level budgetary tool."

Ellsworth said the town "needs to budget $130,000 a year" for maintenance, but that presently $600,000 is needed to bring neglected roads up to par.

Ellsworth thanked Santos and the UNH team for their presentation. "This has been extremely helpful as a basis," he said.

Because the research was conducted as a student project, the cost to the town was a fraction of what the market cost would be.

"We paid $1,500," said Public Works Director Jon St. Pierre. "Normally, that service would cost $25,000."

In other business, Bruce Whitney invited the council and all present to assist in the sixth annual Old Fields Burying Ground Community Clean Up, scheduled for 8 a.m. to noon Saturday, April 14.

"Our goal is to have at least 50 volunteers this year," he said.

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